The Prince Read online

“Your father would be unhappy to see you now,” Alice said. “I am! Either your studies are distressing you or that man is.”

  “Alice, if you please. This is difficult work.”

  “What are you doing, Libby?” Iris asked.

  “I am making a hinge for a prosthesis.”

  “A pro-what?” Alice said.

  “A replacement limb.”

  “For a tree? Good gracious, what are they teaching you at that infirmary?”

  “A limb for a human being, Alice. Now please do hush.”

  Hush.

  She closed her eyes, willing steadiness into her fingers.

  “For which human being?” Alice said into the silence of the crackling fire and sighing pig.

  “For him, of course.”

  Alice’s eyes went round. “Dear girl, you have succumbed.”

  “Succumbed to what?” Iris said.

  “I have not succumbed to anything. This is my project for my diploma. If I succeed in this and pass the exams, I will be able to practice as an independent surgeon.”

  “And what of him?” Alice said. “Does he know it is a project for your diploma?”

  “Yes. He does not approve. But when I return I will alter his opinion. It is for his own good.” She turned up the wick on the lamp and took her tool in hand. “I have never been a ninny for a man, Alice. Trust that I will not begin now.”

  She returned the morning after Epiphany, before he could absent himself from the house. From his studio he heard the front door open, heard her call thanks to the hackney driver, and heard the light clomp of her boots across the foyer and into the corridor, then past the kitchen.

  Not expecting her yet, he had unguardedly left the door to his studio open. Joseph Smart appeared in the aperture.

  He had not seen her since the disastrous Saturday afternoon sitting, after which he had been sorely tempted to cut out his own tongue. To see her now was like coming upon a well in a desert.

  “Felicitations on the new year to you, sir,” she said coolly. “I trust you are well.”

  “Yes.” Now.

  “I am too. Iris developed an affection for Pig, so I left it at Alice’s house. I didn’t think you would mind it. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “I must have your measurements. I can ask most of the necessary measurements of Gibbs, I suspect, whom I assume knows them on behalf of your tailor and shoemaker. But I must also study the particulars of your leg.”

  “There are a hundreds of veterans of war in this city,” he said, returning his attention to the book open on his knee. “Use one of them for your experiment.”

  “You are being obstinate. That is a wretched trait in a man of power and authority.”

  Slowly he lifted his gaze.

  She grunted, and her lips curved with a new sort of confidence.

  “You know,” she said, “I don’t give a damn whether you want this prosthesis or not. This is not about you. This is about me and my project to impress my mentors, and you will do it or I will tell the world who you are.”

  “You don’t know who I am.”

  “I have your name. And I have friends with connections to the government who can assist me in discovering to which foreign gentleman that name is attached.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “You should have thought of that before you told me your name.”

  “You wouldn’t. You actually would not divulge it. To anyone. Your conscience would not allow you to do such a thing. I know this about you.”

  She stared at him, her nostrils flaring above the downy moustache.

  “Damn you, Ziyaeddin Mirza,” finally burst forth. “Damn you, and damn every man who won’t put a light in his window and stay up all night damning you.”

  He laughed.

  The severity slipped away from her mouth. Then the lips he dreamed of both day and night smiled. The brittle light in her eyes became sparkles.

  “Tears now?” he said. “Because I have complimented you on your conscience?”

  “Of course not. I never weep. And do recall that you are not to compliment me on anything. Now, give me the measurements I require.”

  “I don’t know them.”

  “No matter. I’ve a measuring tape.” She reached into her pocket and started forward. “I will—”

  “Halt.”

  Frowning, she obeyed.

  “Leave the tape,” he said, “and a list of whatever you require, on the table in the foyer.”

  “Obstinate and vain.”

  “Not vain.”

  “Proud,” she said. “Too proud to reveal any imperfection.”

  “Perhaps,” he admitted.

  “I am a person of medical science. Physical imperfections are the reason for everything I do,” she said in clean syllables. There was no pity in her voice, and he thought he could love her for that alone.

  “Yet I am merely a man,” he said.

  “You are a foolish man.”

  “And you are a woman with a brash tongue and a willful insolence toward a man who, though possibly foolish, should be accorded at the very least some respect.”

  Her lips twitched. “Fine. If you will not allow me to do the examination I will give you the direction of Mr. Syme, the surgeon I told you about that has had great success with amputations and prostheses. You must meet with him and he will gather from you the information I require to make the device. I have already told him your name. Your false name, that is. I told him that I am acquainted with you through the duke.”

  He nodded.

  “This is ridiculous.” She turned and he had the fleeting glimpse of a smile. “But men are weak creatures and must be treated accordingly, I suppose,” she said breezily as she disappeared down the foyer.

  When she sat for him fully clothed as Joseph Smart that Sunday, it occurred to Libby that it would be easier to take him between her thighs wearing trousers than wearing a skirt. With great ease she could also walk over to him and climb onto his lap and wrap her legs around him.

  Thank heavens for her pride.

  She had learned from Mr. Syme that Ziyaeddin had called on him. Neither of them mentioned it now. When the clock in the parlor rang the eleventh hour he said nothing, nor did she. She simply left.

  Six days later he appeared in the parlor doorway.

  “You have not slept,” he said.

  “Spying on me now, are you?” she said, not lifting her chin from her palm where it rested. “I thought you were out, by the way. Thus my feminine garb now.”

  “Mrs. Coutts is worried about your health.”

  “I am a medical student. If I were in poor health, doesn’t she suppose I would know it? Don’t you?” Finally she allowed herself to look at him.

  The awl of pleasure-pain she always felt upon seeing him tunneled its way deeper into her belly.

  “Have you come here only to berate me for my poor sleep habits?” she snapped, because it was that or begin speaking the thoughts that never let her be now—thoughts about trousers and laps and wrapping her legs around his waist.

  “You are peevish,” he said.

  Dropping the pen, which splattered ink over her page, she sat back. “I sleep very little. Of course I am peevish.”

  He smiled.

  Warmth fanned across her middle.

  “Mr. Syme sent a message to me today,” he said. “He said you have made progress.”

  “Yes. The plaster cast you allowed him to make has allowed me to fashion the socket. I have now done all that I can in preparing the device without having actually performed an examination of you myself.”

  “For what are you waiting?”

  “To screw up the courage to approach you.”

  He lifted a skeptical brow.

  “Yes!” she insisted. “You are a monster, a beast all burrowed away in his lair, striking out at any innocent maiden who crosses you. I am terrified.”

  “Every part of that statement was a fabrication.”

  �
��Except that part about being a maiden. Needn’t I be terrified of you?”

  “Perhaps of—” He halted his words and seemed to reconsider. “How may I assist you, Mr. Smart?”

  His manner of address could mean only one thing.

  She sat forward on the chair. “Now? You are offering to allow me to examine you finally, now? This minute?”

  “Forgive me for my pride.”

  She stood up, her stomach a jumble of knots.

  “Will you hate me for it?” she said. “Afterward? For wounding your pride? For if that is to be the price I must pay to have your cooperation in this, I will choose another project.”

  “Could you choose another project?”

  “If I wished to lower myself to the level of a novice, as many of my classmates, yes. In that case, I could complete a suitable project in the time remaining.”

  “Shall I sit or would you prefer that I remain standing?”

  Her heartbeats were thundering. “Can you promise not to hate me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Should I believe you?”

  “Yes,” he said with the same maddening calm.

  “Honestly?”

  “Of course.”

  “And then there is the elephant in the middle of the room.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The elephant. The great big object that we are both not speaking of, but which is obviously there.”

  He said nothing.

  “An elephant,” she said. “One of those gigantic animals with—”

  He laughed. “Yes. I know what an elephant is.”

  “Oh. Have you seen a real elephant?”

  “No.” Only his eyes were smiling now, the glimmer in them warm and wonderful. “Although I understand that my father once received a pair of elephants as a gift from the ambassador of some elephant-plentiful place.”

  Ambassador?

  “Your father?” she said a bit weakly.

  “He swiftly sent the animals away. He said they were so intelligent that his courtiers became jealous of them, and he feared for the creatures’ lives if they remained.”

  “Courtiers?”

  He tilted his head, his eyes questioning. He was asking her now that if he shared with her what he could, would she be content with partial knowledge? He knew her now. He understood that already she needed to know more.

  For him she could do it. She must. This peculiar alliance they had forged was precious.

  “The elephant in this room,” she said, “is that the last time we were close enough to touch, matters did not proceed well. This situation, of course, is entirely different.”

  “Of course it is,” he said.

  “You do believe that, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  He often spoke like this, with such regal assurance, and now Libby had no trouble imagining him royalty—except that he lived as a common mister in Scotland, with only two servants, and he painted portraits to buy bread.

  And she was a woman pretending to be a man and studying to become a surgeon.

  “Shall we begin?” he said.

  She went to the case in which she kept her tools.

  “I have engaged a woodworker with considerable experience in fashioning false limbs. He has already consulted with your cobbler. And the coppersmith—” She turned and her footsteps faltered.

  Cane propped against a chair, he was standing perfectly balanced on his foot and folding back the trousers fabric and unfastening the straps of the peg support from around his thigh.

  He glanced up at her.

  “Do not lose courage now, Mr. Smart,” he said in an unremarkable tone.

  “If you condescend to me,” she said, swallowing her feelings and moving toward him, “I will tread very hard upon your toes with the heel of my shoe.”

  He chuckled.

  She knelt before him and, as she reached for the trouser leg, their hands brushed. His hands jerked away.

  “I am not boiling water,” she said, folding back the fine fabric and pretending that delicious tendrils of pleasure were not now scurrying up her wrists. “I shan’t scald you.”

  “I am not so certain about that,” he murmured.

  “Straighten your knee.”

  Three quarters of the calf remained, which she had guessed well enough already.

  “But, this is better than I imagined!” Running her fingertips from the kneecap and around, over each tendon, she tested their elasticity. He was all hard muscle and healthy bone and tendons and fascia. “So much better.” She reached into her pocket, withdrew a tiny hammer, and tapped it to the soft tissue beneath the patella. “Excellent reflex.”

  “Warn a man, will you?”

  “Be quiet. I am working. Oh, how lovely for once to be the one to tell you to hush. The tibia, fibula, and the extensors are largely intact and the tendons are remarkably strong. The sawing and cauterization must have been done with great care. And flap-style rather than guillotine. Given that you were at sea this was an extraordinarily fine amputation.”

  “Felt dreadful,” he mumbled.

  “Even the scar tissue is minimal, and it has held up marvelously well despite that wretched peg. A surgeon must have skill to do an amputation of this quality. I assume he chose to amputate because the ankle shattered entirely.” Her fingertips explored the thick, silky scar, then ran along the muscle again, and back up to the tendons and to the cuff of calluses above his knee created by the straps of the peg attachment. His skin was hot to the touch and dusted with masculine black hair.

  “Who performed it?”

  “Seamus Boyle of the Royal Navy.”

  She looked up. “The navy?”

  “Captain Gabriel Hume’s ship’s surgeon.”

  “The Duke of Loch Irvine? That is how you came to know him? He rescued you from the burning ship?”

  “Yes.”

  She should not notice the hard muscle of his thighs, nor marvel at his lean waist or the breadth of his shoulders or the taut beauty of his jaw, nor wonder why he had turned his head and was staring fixedly across the room. He was gripping the back of a chair, his fingers tight about the scrolled wood.

  She sat back on her heels. “I wish to take complete measurements of your foot and ankle and calf.”

  With a single movement he twisted the chair around. He sat, removed his shoe, and then folded up the trouser leg and rolled off the stocking.

  “It is instructive to see how a gentleman undresses,” she said, a bit choked.

  “Not much experience with that, hm?”

  “No.”

  She was watching his hands as he laid them palms down on his thighs. Ziyaeddin willed the tightness in his cock to subside.

  It did not.

  “This man is now as undressed as he will be,” he said, the syllables rocky. “Commence thine examination, Doctor.”

  Her gaze darted up.

  On her knees. Before him. Eyes full of intention and curiosity. Brow creased with wisdom. Clever hands that could find bones and sinews beneath a man’s skin. Ten agile fingers that could manipulate muscle like bread dough.

  Yet he could think of only one thing.

  He was a dog.

  “Stand, please,” she said.

  He did so, and she touched first his instep and then the bones of his ankle and shin and generally spent too much time running her hands all over him until he was in agony. He was not a weak man. But there was only so much he could do to halt the inevitable. If she chose this moment to look up, she would get an eyeful.

  He stared at the wall where hung a prayer rug upon which the tiny knots that fashioned the pattern spelled out a prayer in Arabic: Allaahumma innee as-alukal-'aafiyah, wash-shukra 'alal-'aafiyah. O Allah, I ask from You the well-being, and to be grateful for the well-being.

  He was not a praying man. Nine years ago his faith had gone into the sea alongside his freedom. He did not keep the rug to remind him to pray. He kept it because, other than the watch, it was the o
nly object from Tabir that he possessed. When shortly after his arrival in Scotland he had found the rug in a market in Leith, with the insignia of his family’s dynasty woven into the pattern, he had thought it a blessing of sorts, a message that he had been meant to come to this land to heal. To live.

  No longer.

  Letters from London told him of unrest on Iran’s northern border. It would soon be time to leave Britain. The brilliant woman on her knees before him would not know that he had accepted this gift not for her sake, but for his. He would not return to Tabir broken. She could make him whole.

  She had set the measuring tape on the floor and was making marks in a notebook. It was a moment’s reprieve from her touch, and he hated how much he wanted her hands on him again, even in this clinical manner.

  “My father was correct,” he said.

  “That elephants are intelligent?”

  “That his courtiers were fools. They perished in a single night, except those who betrayed him, of course.”

  Her eyes came to his. Her lips were a tight line.

  “What caused those scars on your ankle and foot?” she said.

  “A manacle and chain.”

  Her lashes made a single quick beat.

  “I am finished here.” Rising to her feet, she went to her writing table. “I will complete the prosthesis within the next several days. Now I must study. So you must go away and do whatever it is that portrait artists do when they are not telling gullible surgical students tall tales of the despicably tragic variety.” Without looking at him she said, “What is the writing on the watch?”

  “‘Now do as princes do when prudent, pious, and beneficent—Serve God and him alone in good times and bad.’”

  She waved her hand impatiently, shooing him away.

  The impatience was like her. Avoiding his gaze was not. So he knew this was her way of telling him that she believed him.

  Chapter 19

  The Touch

  “She isn’t ill.” Chedham stood beside her at the washing basin.

  “Who?”

  He glanced toward the cots in the ward. “Mrs. Small. She pretends pain so she can sleep in that bed and eat a hot meal each day.”

  “Mr. Bridges removed a tumor from her only six days ago, Chedham.” Though if Mrs. Small were lingering in convalescence to ensure herself bed and food, Libby couldn’t blame her. Ice clung to every rooftop in Edinburgh.